


Into Silence

by Morgan (morgan32)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-21
Updated: 2009-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgan32/pseuds/Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story was written as a challenge: the idea was to select an episode and write a particular character's thoughts and feelings about those events. Of course, I picked Daniel. This story really covers only part of the ep...but a happy ending would have ruined it :) SPOILERS for <em>Into The Fire.</em></p>
    </blockquote>





	Into Silence

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written as a challenge: the idea was to select an episode and write a particular character's thoughts and feelings about those events. Of course, I picked Daniel. This story really covers only part of the ep...but a happy ending would have ruined it :) SPOILERS for _Into The Fire._

From the moment I hear her voice, I know it is over.

I'm not sure _what_ is over, exactly ... I guess that sounds crazy. It's just, she changed my life once before. I might have seemed to go on as before, but I wasn't. She changed everything. She. I can hardly bear even to think her name. Hathor.

"Silence!" she orders, and a part of me still instinctively obeys that voice. I wish I could forget, wish I could tear out those memories and burn them like ... like the fire she left behind her the last time. But I cannot.

She is here, the Queen, and she would not be denied.

I hear her tell Sam we are immune to the organism she uses to control men. A small, hysterical part of me laughs to hear it. I am afraid I might have laughed out loud, but the others give no sign of hearing. Because what she said was only partly true. Jack may be free of her, and Sam was never under her power. But me? No ... it still calls to me. I'm disgusted with myself.

All we can do is stand in silence, waiting for the scene to play out. She has a sense of the theatrical, this one. She needs an audience. She pretends to cajole, knowing none of us would tell her anything. _Pleased_ to know we would tell her nothing. That is her plan. She knows what she intends to do.

She carries a Goa'uld in her hand. I have never seen a mature one so close. I am fascinated, as much as I am terrified. I heard Jack speak, but I cannot hear the words. His sarcasm masks fear.

I am frozen to the ground. I hear her ask again, "Which one of you shall be host to our new friend?" as if she's asking for volunteers. Like she's going to get one. Why must she play this game? Why torture us this way? I know she will choose me: it is in her eyes. In her voice.

Her fingers stroke my cheek, a gesture I remember. Oh, god help me, she draws me still.

"Beloved," she calls me. I feel my muscles twitch and I almost step forward. It takes all the control I have to remain where I am.

She speaks of pleasure shared. The pleasure, as I recall, was all hers. I manage, somehow to speak. I have no idea what I am saying. Her eyes harden: she is displeased. Part of me cringes that I have failed her; but the satisfaction is stronger. She moves away.

She teases Sam with her threats but I know the threat is an empty one. Hathor doesn't want a lackey, she wants a Pharaoh. Sam is safe.

Then I hear her say, "Our friend has chosen."

Jack.

Oh, god forgive me, all I can think is _Thank god it's not me!_ Anyone, anything but that. Even as my heart shrinks in horror from that thought, I hear Jack speak again. I look at him in shock: surely he's not willing for this to happen? Then I see him move, taking her completely by surprise. Of course. Jack, always the soldier, always with a contingency plan, even if it is a one in a million chance.

We are not lucky this time.

It's all too fast. There's a sound and a flash and Jack is down. He can't be dead? It takes two shots to kill, I remember. Hathor is furious, but the woman doesn't even flinch. One chance in a million, but it seems Jack has only bought himself time.

***

I hate them. I hate them, I _hate_ them! Evil ... alien. They see us as lower beings, beasts of burden. We exist to serve them. We are placed in the universe for their pleasure alone.

I hate them.

They have stolen my wife from me. They stole my _life_. Even if I can find her again, it will never be the same. If only ...

I remember Ra. I remember a beautiful boy, surrounded by a decadent court, like an emperor of Ancient Earth. Which is exactly what he was. He enslaved entire planets. He killed because he liked to do so. And he's dead.

Odd that before today I never considered that he, too, held an innocent captive as his host. An innocent we killed along with Ra.

Will someone one day see Jack the same way?

Thank god she chose him and not me!

***

I see the light in her eyes as she tells Jack he is going to kill us. Jack is defiant, but Sam, beside me, is tense. She knows better than any of us the truth of Hathor's words.

She does it to torment us. I am almost pleased: we must have really annoyed her for her to get this much pleasure from our pain. I am numb. Detached. Later (if there is a later) this will hurt like hell, I know.

I force myself to watch. It is the least I can do. I _could _have prevented this. I could have saved him. I don't have that sort of courage.

Not this time.

I hear Jack protest as she places that _thing_ on him. He's wasting his breath and we all know it. God ... no ... let me wake up now. Please just let me wake up.

The sound of Jack in pain will ring in my ears for whatever time I have left.

I can hear gunfire in the distance, but it doesn't register. It's meaningless.

***

Hathor will keep her word. In a few hours we will be dead. I think that will be a relief now.

Must I lose everyone I love to the Goa'uld?

Sha're. I stayed with her on Abydos for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't for her: I just had no good reason to go back. Yet I found with her a love more complete, more intense than I had believed possible. She was my saviour. She was the absolute centre of my universe and the miracle was, I was also hers. I don't know what I ever did to deserve that. I had found somewhere I could truly belong for the first time in my life: the place where she was.

And I lost it all. My fault. My own stupid fault. I should have left that Gate in the ground where it belonged!

That's the worst, but it's not the only one. There's Skaara, too. Her brother ... and mine. He had a reckless kind of courage, and a curiosity about everything. I guess in that one way he reminded me of me. He was totally reckless, yet somehow he was responsible at the same time. He had a desire to protect others -- no doubt that's what attracted Jack to him. One day he would have been a leader of his people. I tried to teach him what I could, but he taught me as much.

Jack ... I love. A different kind of love, there. One I fought forever. On the surface we have nothing in common. Yet we've somehow formed a friendship I would have thought impossible when we first met. A common purpose helped, I guess. We owe each other our lives: there's a bond made by that which can't be broken.

Except this way.

She's going to make him kill us.

There's a part of me finds justice in that.

I don't want to get out of this alive. I don't want to live with what's happened to Jack.

I can't live with knowing I could have stopped it.


End file.
